Peril on the high seas; Mansfield residents on cruise ship that caught fire

Andrea Matthews did everything a mother could do to ensure her older daughter's graduation present would be safe and memorable, our news partners at Wicked Local/Mansfield reported.

She avoided the troubled Carnival Cruise line in favor of the Royal Caribbean.

She was anxious about sending her two children on their first solo cruise and had the Boston Marathon bombings still fresh in her mind so she booked passage out of the smaller port of Baltimore instead of New York City.

But her best-laid plans couldn't control the vagaries of travel on the high seas.

Four days into the seven-day cruise of a lifetime, she got a call from daughter Molly.

"She said they were all okay and getting ready to get off the ship and onto the island," Matthews recalled.

It was around 10 a.m. on Memorial Day and Matthews was on the job as a nursing supervisor at Brockton Hospital.

She hadn't seen the news.

"Molly said, 'did you hear about the fire?' "

A pre-dawn fire had broken out on the Royal Caribbean's "Grandeur of the Seas." It had spread to several decks.

Molly, 22, and her younger sister Aubrey 18, both Mansfield High School graduates, and their boyfriends Danny Sarkis of Mansfield and Victor Joyner of Dorchester, had been clubbing on the ship until 2 a.m. They were awoken an hour later by loud banging on their doors and crews screaming for them to grab their life jackets and report to their designated muster stations

Their cabins were below deck so the darkness didn't startle them. A sleepy Aubrey thought the ship had arrived at their destination on Cocoa Cay – the private island of Royal Caribbean - so she grabbed her bathing suit and sun hat.

When they got on deck, it was pitch black. They were in the middle of the ocean and it was cold. Molly thought the ship was sinking.

The ship's crew lowered the lifeboats and told the more than 2,200 terrified passengers to be ready to abandon ship two by two.

They said everyone would be given an anti-nausea pill so they would not get sick on the small crafts.

The cruise was suddenly looking less like the "Love Boat" and more like the "Titanic."

"It was really scary. Everyone was in a panic and the crew was running up and down the ship with fire extinguishers and oxygen. I could smell the smoke," she said.

Ironically, a Carnival Cruise ship was circling them during the entire event in case an evacuation was necessary.

They remained on deck for four hours. By 7 a.m., the fire was out and the sun was up.

They could see land.

But it wasn't Cocoa Cay. It was Freeport, Bahamas. The vacation was over. Molly called her mother.

It wasn't until she saw the television news that she realized how the severity of the electrical fire in the stern.

"It was not a small room fire," Molly said.

The next morning, the foursome boarded a charter flight to Baltimore. They drove back to Mansfield on Wednesday.

Molly has been on two cruises with her family but says she's always been a little wary "of the whole boat thing.

Despite her fears, she says she will take the company up on its offer for a free cruise.

"I think it was a freak accident and it was handled really well by the crew. They were great," she said. "We have everything planned and this was not exactly what we had planned for."

For now, the Bridgewater State University psychology graduate will start looking for work.

Andrea Matthews also has nothing but praise for Royal Caribbean and its efforts to immediately set up an information line and website with updates for concerned family members.

"Honestly, I just can't wait for them to be safe at home again," she said of her children "I actually picked this exact cruise and this exact ship."

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